Incidental retrieval-induced forgetting of location information

Abstract

Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) has been studied with different types of tests and materials. However, RIF has always been tested on the items' central features, and there is no information on whether inhibition also extends to peripheral features of the events in which the items are embedded. In two experiments, we specifically tested the presence of RIF in a task in which recall of peripheral information was required. After a standard retrieval practice task oriented to item identity, participants were cued with colors (Exp. 1) or with the items themselves (Exp. 2) and asked to recall the screen locations where the items had been displayed during the study phase. RIF for locations was observed after retrieval practice, an effect that was not present when participants were asked to read instead of retrieving the items. Our findings provide evidence that peripheral location information associated with an item during study can be also inhibited when the retrieval conditions promote the inhibition of more central, item identity information.Keywords Retrieval-induced forgetting . Inhibition . Memory for location . Covert cuing Our memories are assumed to consist of multimodal attributes of the entities that we experienced in the past, including contextual information of various kinds (Barsalou, 1999). Thus, when we recall a past experience, we not only retrieve individual entities such as objects, people, or words, but also peripheral information associated with the particular experience with that entity. Thus, if we think of the last class we taught, we may recall the question that a particular student asked, but also the place where this student sat in the class or the fact that it was early in the afternoon. A general conception of how the memory system is able to automatically encode spatial, temporal, and frequency information was advanced by Hasher and Zacks (1979), and subsequent studies have provided more specific corroborating evidence, particularly in regard to the encoding of location information. For example, Köhler, Moscovitch, and Melo (2001), in an incidental-learning task for object locations, found that making judgments on attributes related to object identity enhanced memory performance not only when the identity of the objects was tested, but also when the retrieval task tested memory for the object locations. Similarly, Lachmair, Dudschig, De Fillippis, de la Vega, and Kaup (2011) showed that location information was activated when processing words. They asked their participants to perform lexical tasks on concepts that referred to entities associated with an up or down location (e.g., ROOF and ROOT). The results showed that responding was faster when the responses (e.g., the positions of the response keys) were congruent with the locations on the object to which they were related (e.g., ROOF above ROOT). This suggests that spatial location is automatically bound to item identity and is accessed when retrieving words and objects.In the present article, we aim to further illuminate...

Low involvement of preexisting associations makes retrieval-induced forgetting long lasting

“…In Experiment 1, we showed that similar forgetting is obtained with these three types of materials in an immediate memory test when similar procedures are used. Importantly, this finding replicates the results of other studies showing RIF for semantic category-based items (i.e., Anderson et al 1994;Storm et al 2006), visual-spatial material (i.e., Ciranni and Shimamura 1999;Gómez-Ariza et al 2012) and thematically unrelated sentences (Anderson and Bell 2001;Gómez-Ariza et al 2005, 2009.…”

Retrieval induces forgetting, but only when nontested items compete for retrieval: Implication for interference, inhibition, and context reinstatement.

“…For example, one method to examine competition dependence is to compare strengthening of the Rp+ items by retrieval practice or by restudying (Ciranni & Shimamura, 1999;Gómez-Ariza, Fernandez, & Bajo, 2012;Hulbert et al, 2012;Jonker et al, 2013;Verde, 2013). The logic is that strengthening Rp+ items by study repetitions should not produce retrieval-induced forgetting because Rp-items would not compete, whereas strengthening based on retrieval practice should produce retrieval-induced forgetting.…”

Modality-specific forgetting

“…Take, for example, the popular forgetting phenomenon retrieval-induced forgetting. Retrieval-induced forgetting was originally demonstrated with words (Anderson et al, 1994), but has been shown to generalize to a variety of materials such as visual-spatial objects (Ciranni & Shimamura, 1999), eyewitness memories (Shaw, Bjork, & Handal, 1995), motor memory (Tempel, Aslan, & Frings, 2016), and location information (Gómez-Ariza, Fernandez, & Bajo, 2012). Given that the above-named theories of forgetting attempt to account for retrieval-induced forgetting, the many stimulus types susceptible to this forgetting effect may be a liability in elucidating the underlying mechanism.…”